My Life in Music Cognition Research

My life in music cognition research

W. JAY DOWLING University of Texas at Dallas

abstract—The author traces his interest and was playing records at my education in music from childhood through adulthood. grandparents’ house, and He describes the development of ideas about his core I inadvertently sat on a work, involving interleaved melodies, auditory attention, Gigli “La Donna é Mobile”; memory representation for melody, and “expectancy of course the lacquer windows,” among other topics. Important ideas, influential disc was smashed. I was teachers, and main collaborators are described from his very embarrassed, but dissertation work at Harvard to early jobs at UCLA and I think my grandfather Cal State L.A., to his position in the School of Behav- was just relieved that it ioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas. The author’s wasn’t something less interest in the development of melody perception stems W. Jay Dowling expendable. from observation of his own children. More recent work My father’s collec- on memory for melodies and on aging and music cognition differed from my grandfather’s in its tion is also covered. The article ends with a discussion devotion to Gilbert and Sullivan; he had five or six of changes that have taken place in music psychology of the operettas in their massive twelve-disc albums. over the past 40 years. During the 1940s one of my father’s friends, who taught metal shop and who came from somewhere in the Southwest of England, got the high-school faculty and students to put on a Gilbert and Sullivan I was born in Washington, D. C., on February 4, production, complete with a small orchestra which 1941, and grew up in Northern Virginia where my he would conduct from the piano. The most impres- father taught industrial arts (wood shop, metal shop, sive role my father played was the Chief of Police drafting, and printing) at Fairfax High School. Both in The Pirates of Penzance. I remember vividly his my father and grandfather (my mother’s father) billy club—they turned out the billy clubs in wood played the violin, though my father, who had grown shop—decorated with the words of his songs, just in up in upstate New York, referred to what he did as case he forgot. (“When the foeman bares his steel “fiddling.” Some of my earliest memories are of him …”). He was also Dick Deadeye in H.M.S. Pinafore, playing dance tunes like Turkey in the Straw and The and at least one of my very proper aunts thought Irish Washerwoman. My mother played the piano, and that my mother ought not to take me (then four or Sinding’s Rustle of Spring was one of our favorites. five) to see my father play such a scruffy character. It’s probably good that I didn’t develop absolute She did, though, and I enjoyed it immensely. pitch, however, because our ancient upright, though The most spectacular thing my father did was it had a good sound, could not be tuned up to stan- only indirectly connected to music, however. At the dard pitch, and so I grew up listening to a B# piano. end of the war he learned that the linotype machine Both my father and grandfather were avid collec- from Gen. Patton’s headquarters was being sold as tors of records, and they each had about 500 or 600 surplus in New York, and he pursuaded the school

of them. Both of them had extensive collections of W. Jay Dowling, School of Behavioral & Brain Sciences, Italian opera arias, including Caruso, Tito Schipa, University of Texas at Dallas. John McCormack, and Jussi BjÖrling. My father’s Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to W. Jay Dowling, School of Behavioral & Brain favorite was Martinelli. Both of them were devoted Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell to Fritz Kreisler. Once when I was six or seven, I Road, Richardson TX 75080. E-mail: [email protected].

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adminstration to acquire it for his print shop. who had played trombone in a ship’s band in the Then he and my mother and I went to New York South Pacific, became my first music teacher. I think where he arranged the sale and shipping for the I made decent progress, but as I approached high machine, and my mother and I explored the city. school it became apparent that I would never have Once the large and complicated machine was back any facility with the upper register of the baritone, in Virginia, he rebuilt it from the bottom up and and the logical choice seemed to be to switch to restored it to working order. Linotype machines, tuba. I was very happy playing tuba, and continued a triumph of 19th-century technology, have since to play all the way through graduate school. I partic- disappeared from the industrial landscape, but ularly enjoyed the Bach cello suites and Beethoven’s then it was useful to students to know how to cello sonatas, though I must caution the reader that operate them. The machines were in some ways those are much more fun to play on the tuba than dangerous monsters—apt to squirt molten lead at to listen to. My younger sister is an excellent flutist, the operator at odd moments—but I always enjoyed and I heard quite a lot of the standard flute litera- watching and listening to them. The machinery ture, and we enjoyed playing Handel’s flute sonatas was driven by a large cam shaft going through the with the tuba as the continuo instrument. middle of the machine, and as it went through its When I graduated from high school in 1959 my cycle, levers, connected to the various components parents gave me a trip to New York with Mr. Fuller to that performed the machine’s functions, were have a lesson from Bill Bell, the eminent New York pushed and pulled in an elaborate and fascinat- tuba player, and to see a show. As luck would have ing rhythm, difficult to notate. You could tell from it, we were able to see West Side Story at the Winter listening to the rhythm what the machine was up to Garden. I had been a fan of Leonard Bernstein’s at each instant. all through the 50s, trying never to miss his illus- trated TV lectures on our seven-inch black and white screen. The opportunity to see West Side Story school years was irresistable, and I pursuaded Mr. Fuller that we really had to see it. (He had some misgivings The machine also facilitated the school print shop because he viewed some of the content as “adult.” taking on a project proposed by my father’s friend, However, I think my parents fully approved, in spite Phil Fuller, the school band director, who came to of what my proper aunts might have said.) The show, Fairfax with a master’s degree from Northwestern. as you can imagine, was absolutely stunning, musi- Mr. Fuller was active in the Virginia Band and cally and visually and emotionally. I had never seen Orchestra Directors’ Association (VBODA), and anything like it. I remember vividly the moment wanted to put the VBODA Manual, the list of when, in the darkened theater, the alto begins sing- approved solo and ensemble pieces for state music ing Somewhere. festivals, in better shape. We took on the job of Another good experience Mr. Fuller facilitated publishing the manual. I was then 10 or 12 and for me was to have me serve as student director of adept at typesetting and making corrections in the the band during my senior year. We had a stage set type after its proofs were corrected, and this band that played during intermission for the junior exercise familiarized me with the solo literature and senior plays, usually medleys from Broadway available in print for a wide range of instruments. shows. I got to select the music (from South Pacific, (It has always surprised me that there was no equiva- Oklahoma, and The King and I) and rehearse and lent of Books in Print for published music.) direct the performances. I also made an arrange- When I was eight or so my parents consulted with ment of one of Bach’s Christmas Cantatas (No. Mr. Fuller because they thought it was time for me 142—some say it was written by Johann Kuhnau) to begin learning to play an instrument, which I was that the choir was working on for the Christmas eager to do. After considerable testing and discus- concert, but as it turned out we only did the final sion we settled on the baritone horn, and Mr. Fuller, chorus with band and choir together.

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college puzzling about—questions about man’s place in the universe, about our understanding of our world, After graduation, attracted by the prospect of a snow- both natural and social, and about the meaning of ier winter than in Virginia, and encouraged by Mr. music—could be addressed empirically. Campbell’s Fuller, I went to the Music School at Northwestern to approach was in the tradition of the American prag- continue my education. I had done well on the SATs matism of Peirce and James and Dewey, which is to a s well a s on tuba, and t hey gave me a scholarship. (A s say basically Kantian with a heavy dose of Darwinian I found out when my daughters went off to college, evolution. I began to read Campbell’s papers and scholarships are no longer allotted on the basis of took his Social Psychology course, and decided to competence, except in sports.) At this point my major in psychology. I went to talk with him and told good luck in playing the tuba really came into play, him I would like him to be my advisor. He agreed, since the tuba teacher at NU was Arnold Jacobs, on the condition that I would be responsible for tubist with the Chicago Symphony. (His marvel- knowing the requirements printed in the Catalog. I lous 1951 recording with Rafael Kubelik of Bydlo immersed myself in the comparative psychology of from Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition is still in knowledge processes, doing an honor’s thesis on that print.) Not only was he a great tuba teacher, encour- topic. And since coming to UT Dallas I have been aging us in very basic things like breathing and in teaching a core course on the history of psychology, exciting the instrument with the correct frequency subtitled “Minds and Machines Since 1600.” Besides of buzz in the mouthpiece to hit the right pitch, but Peirce, I have been most impressed with the work he was also doing research with his colleagues in the of Spinoza, who was very early able to see through symphony on the physics and physiology of playing the shortcomings of Cartesian dualism and provide brass instruments. He discovered, for example, that a coherent account of mind and body. for every octave you go up across the whole brass After transferring to Arts and Sciences, I stayed range, the air flow through the instrument halves in the band, which I enjoyed, and continued to study and the pressure inside the mouth doubles. This is tuba with Mr. Jacobs. One thing I did have to do why trumpet players turn red in the face and tubists with the switch was choose a foreign language. For tend to hyperventilate. This emphasis on empirical reasons which are not entirely clear to me, I chose research had a definite influence on me. French, and that turned out to be a very fortunate I had a good experience in music school, learn- choice. I began to enjoy reading French literature, ing to sing better in tune, studying piano for two and when I became more and more interested in years, and taking a quarter of clarinet and of double the psychology of music, I realized that Francès’s bass. I got a job singing in the choir of St. Luke’s, La Psychologie de la Musique was one of the main a very high Episcopal church in Evanston. Having classics in the field, along with Helmholtz’s On the been brought up Catholic but with a dearth of good Sensations of Tone and Leonard Meyer’s Emotion and music in the churches in Virginia, I was now able Meaning in Music. So when the opportunity to trans- to participate in Medieval and Renaissance church late Francès’s book arrived in the 80s, I was well music on a grand scale. We would march around the prepared (Francès, 1988). church in our choir robes and sing English transla- In my junior and senior years I became more and tions of Gregorian chants (the Dies Irae at funerals more interested in the emerging field of psycholin- was especially good), and Elizabethan motets. And guistics, and when I talked with Prof. Campbell our choir director, Mr. Boe, was a really fine organist about that he took Saporta’s new reader in the field and would treat us to elaborate postludes by Bach, down off the shelf and said, well, let’s see where the such as the “St. Anne” Prelude and Fugue in E#. people are who are doing that. We picked Illinois I spent two years in the Music School, but was and MIT and Harvard. I had done well on the GREs gradually drawn more and more to psychology. I and received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and saw, especially in the work of Donald T. Campbell, the interdisciplinary program in Social Relations an approach in which the kinds of question I was at Harvard admitted me. So in 1963 I graduated

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from college and headed for Harvard. At the same Our success with the Christmas carols led Don time I married Caroline Monahan, whom I had Norman to think that we might use the audio met at Northwestern. We split up eight years later, output from the computer for psychological experi- but she remained a good colleague after that, and ments. He suggested that we might explore Miller completed her doctoral work with Ed Carterette at and Heise’s (1950; Heise & Miller, 1951) trill thresh- UCLA. old, and that the effect, where tones alternating Between college and grad school I spent the in separate pitch ranges split apart into separate summer teaching tuba at the College of William perceptual streams, might be interesting to explore and Mary’s summer band camp, which I had in terms of music. We set about temporally interleav- attended since I was 14. I arranged Bach chorales ing melodies on the computer, and seeing how far for the eight budding tubists in my class to play, apart we had to shift them in pitch in order for them two on a part. I quickly realized that major to split apart and become individually recognizable. thirds are quite dissonant in the lower-mid- This led to my dissertation, the results of which were dle tuba range, something I would understand published in Dowling (1973b). Due to the operation better after reading Plomp and Levelt (1965). I of the Zeitgeist, other laboratories were working on also arranged Mozart’s Concert Rondo, K. 371, to this problem at the same time, which led to some play with the band, and we presented it at the noteworthy publications (Bregman & Campbell, final concert of the summer. 1971; Van Noorden, 1975). The most interesting discovery I made in the dissertation occurred rather serendipitously. The graduate school same fellow grad students were generously serving as subjects in the series of experiments. In a typi- My first advisor at Harvard was Roger Brown, and cal series of trials I would start with two interleaved I served as a research assistant on his fascinating familiar melodies and move them apart in pitch and ground-breaking child language development until the listener could name one of them, thus project. It was a heady experience, with our group measuring the pitch separation threshold for iden- meeting frequently with Chomsky and the MIT tification. But after they had been in a few of these linguists to plot strategy. I was mostly involved with sessions with the same eight melodies, the listeners the Center for Cognitive Studies, which then was were able to name most of the melodies even when down the street from the future William James Hall they were interleaved in the same pitch range. So I and was organized by Roger Brown and George decided to test some naive listeners by telling them Miller and Jerome Bruner. The second year I was what melody to listen for in the interleaved pattern. there the Cognition Center acquired one of the After some warm-up trials, listeners were able to first laboratory computers, a Digital Equipment achieve close to 100 % hits and 0 % false alarms Corporation (DEC) PDP-5, and we graduate in that task. I concluded that listeners are able to students learned to program it. Don Norman was aim their auditory attention at the precise points in the faculty member most directly involved with it, time and pitch where critical events are expected to and he thought it would be a cute idea to have it occur, and evaluate those events in relation to their play Christmas carols for the staff party. It was a memory representation of the familiar melody with large and intimidating machine—it filled a large whose name they were cued (Dowling, 1973b). I also room and had whirring fans to keep it cool—even found a similar result when listeners try to recog- though it had only 56K of core memory. He wired nize octave-scrambled melodies; when cued as to the lowest accumulator bit to an amplifier so we which melody to listen for, they can verify whether could output a square wave, and I wrote assembly- the cued melody is present in the octave-scrambled language programs to turn that bit on and off at pattern (Dowling & Hollombe, 1977). I followed the right frequencies to produce the songs. When up these results in subsequent research (Dowling, filtered appropriately this sounded ok. 1978b; Dowling, 1984a; Dowling, Lung, & Herrbold,

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1987; Andrews & Dowling, 1991; Dowling, 1992), My own favorite study was the next in this series testing the extent of the “expectancy windows” on memory for melodies (Dowling, 1986a). In it I within which expected events would be detected surrounded a brief melody with a chordal context and exploring the development of this ability. This that defined it as built around the tonic, the first has led to more recent work using a paradigm in degree of the scale, or the dominant, the fifth which the target sound is cued for pitch and time degree. (I constructed melodies that omitted the of occurrence using a little melody. We find that fourth and seventh scale degrees so that I could listeners react quickly and accurately to targets at move them between tonic and dominant with- expected times and pitches in the musical structure out distortion.) A melody would be presented in (Dowling & Tillmann, 2004). one of those contexts, and then after a filled delay would be tested in a new key with the context either relatively the same, or shifted between tonic and ucla dominant. I found that nonmusicians did better than chance, and equally well with the same or Before I had finished my dissertation, in 1966 I the shifted context. The performance of moder- received a job offer from UCLA at the same time ately experienced listeners, though better than Don Norman moved to the new campus at UC San that of nonmusicians with the same context, fell Diego. The prospect of a real paying job was irresis- to chance with different context. Whereas nonmu- table, and I had always been curious about the west sicians encoded the pitch patterns of the melodies coast. (Prof. Bruner very kindly filled in as disserta- independent of the context, the encoding of moder- tion advisor when I finally finished in 1968.) I had ately trained musicians was context-dependent, and an excellent learning experience at UCLA. I was their performance suffered when the context was assigned to teach the undergraduate core course changed. In effect, these listeners were encoding the in perception, with 225 students in the lecture hall. melodies in terms of the tonal scale-step values of Since I had never even had a perception course, Ed the notes. (“Moderately trained” here means having Carterette and Jim Thomas (the vision researcher) had about 5 years of music lessons in their youth.) became my mentors and told me what to read each This is something their brains were doing automati- week so that I could stay ahead of the class and know cally, and was clearly not under conscious control. somewhat more than was in the basic texts we were Otherwise they would be able to take melodic dicta- using. There is absolutely nothing as motivating for tion, something good musicians don’t usually learn learning as the realization that you are going to face to do until the first years of college. These listeners 225 eager, inquisitive students every other day, and would be surprised to learn what their brains were that you don’t really want to give the impression up to. that you don’t know what you’re talking about. I am These results and those of Dowling (1978a) and totally convinced that this was the most effective way the studies on interleaved and octave-scrambled possible for me to learn perception. melodies reviewed above led me to the conclusion My research at UCLA was focused on how we that melodies are not encoded in memory in terms remember melodies. I found that whereas listen- of successions of intervals (as is often claimed), but ers have quite precise representations of familiar rather as a succession of pitch classes in a move- tunes, novel tunes—at least brief novel tunes—are able-do system (Dowling, 1991b, pp. 54-55). This at first encoded principally in terms of their ups and is because: (1) Melodies can be recognized when downs, their melodic contour (Dowling & Fujitani, intervals have been disrupted, as in interleaved or 1971). This line of research led to the theory that octave-scrambled melodies. (2) Intervals are most melodies are represented in memory as a combi- easily recalled with reference to melodies, and not nation of their melodic-rhythmic contour plus the vice-versa. (3) The tonal hierarchy is defined in mapping of that contour onto a tonal scale frame- terms of pitch classes, not intervals. (4) Pitches are work (Dowling, 1978a). easy to hold in short-term memory, but intervals

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are not. (5) Inversions of intervals, which retain dichotic listening to Baroque flute duets, some of the pitch classes but change the interval, are often them canons (like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Frère treated as functionally equivalent in music. (6) Jacques). The question was, what memory strategies Dynamic tendencies of pitches in a tonal context, do listeners use to decide whether what they are like the attraction of the leading tone toward the hearing is a canon? I found that it depends on which tonic, operate in terms of pitch classes and not ear is leading. If the right ear leads (and the input intervals. Taken together with more recent results is presumably processed mostly in the left hemi- (Dowling, Tillmann, & Ayers, 2001, Dowling & sphere), the encoding strategy is more analytic, and Tillman, in preparation) this leads me to believe success depends on the time lag between presenta- that the characterization of the memory represen- tion of relevant details in the two parts. If the left ear tation of a melody as scale plus contour (Dowling, leads, encoding is more holistic and doesn’t depend 1978a) is fundamentally sound. as much on the time lag (Dowling, 1978b). It was at UCLA also that, with my student Dane Harwood, I began to write Music Cognition (1986). Ed Carterette was immensely helpful in that enter- ut dallas prise, from enthusiastic encouragement to helping to find a publisher, to giving every page more than Due to the year-to-year nature of my position, I kept one careful critical reading. He also sponsored applying for jobs, as many as 140 in a year. At last one my becoming a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of materialized at the new campus of the University of America. Texas at Dallas. The new chairperson and the new vice-president interviewed me at the LA airport because the campus was still under construction in cal state l.a. the spring of 1975. UT Dallas was self-consciously interdisciplinary and I fit right in. It has been fun Due to my lack of organization and failure to to help organize a new campus which has grown publish very much, I didn’t get tenure at UCLA. steadily and is now becoming a major university. My (Though I can’t claim to have felt this way at the colleagues here, especially Jim Bartlett, Hervé Abdi, time, I now think their decision was entirely reason- and the composer Robert Rodriguez, have been able, and I would do the same.) As an example of my congenial and helpful and fun to work with. I served disorganization: Note that it took five years between as chairperson in Psychology and in our graduate completing my dissertation and getting it published program in Applied Cognition & Neursocience for (and considerable patience and exertion of editing about 14 of the last 32 years (up to the spring of skills on the part of Saul Sternberg, to whom I am 2000), and enjoyed the mostly helpful and coop- forever grateful). Advice to young researchers: Get erative atmosphere of our school and campus organized right away and publish your work as fast administration. I am sure I am happier here than I as possible! I spent two years in a temporary posi- would ever have been in LA. tion at Cal State L.A. Teaching there was a good When I moved to Dallas, Darlene Smith, whom experience in preparation for coming to UT Dallas. I had met at UCLA, accompanied me, and we were We served a highly diverse population of students married in January, 1976. Over the next three years mostly returning to school to finish their education, we had two daughters, Calla and Erica, and having and we were conscientious in offering everything children was and still is one of the most exciting one needed to complete a degree in the evenings things in my life. I found them fascinating from the as well as the daytime. They were kind enough to moment they were born. When they began singing provide me with some research space, which was at a around the house I recorded them. Singing is very premium on that campus. I literally shared a broom different from speech-like babbling—it tends to closet with another faculty member, complete with hold vowels on steady pitches and to maintain some brooms and mops. The main result was a study on semblance of a beat. There were regularities in their

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spontaneous songs such as repetitions of kernel changes in melodies easier to spot than moving phrases at varying pitch levels, and codas that ended from atonal to tonal (Bartlett & Dowling, 1988). I repetitious songs with a flourish (Dowling, 1982a, continued this series of studies on tonality effects in 1984b, 1988b, 1999). Even though the songs of two- melody recognition and on the time course of melody year-olds do not yet use the tonal scales of the child’s recognition with my students Melinda Andrews and culture, the child moves among discrete pitch levels SeYeul Kwak, both creative experimenters (Dowling, in singing. Calla and Erica still sing together, and 1991a; Dowling, Kwak, & Andrews, 1995). sometimes let me sing, too, and are currently finish- In the 90s Bartlett and I did a series of studies ing graduate degrees in their fields of library science on aging and music cognition with Andrea Halpern at Michigan and speech pathology at UT Dallas. from Bucknell, a collaboration that also included When we arrived at the new campus the univer- Andrews and Kwak. We studied listeners over a sity chorus needed everybody it could get, so Darlene wide range of age and expertise, and looked at and I joined the chorus and immediately plunged melody recognition from several angles including into singing in the Dallas Symphony’s performance transposition recognition, recognition of famil- of Mahler’s Second Symphony. For the next 10 or iar and unfamiliar melodies in normal aging and 12 years, our choir served as the symphony choir, Alzheimer’s disease, and the role of mode, rhythm, performing in most of the classics of the repertoire and contour in recognition (Halpern, Bartlett, & for choir and orchestra, from Bach and Handel Dowling, 1995; Bartlett, Halpern, & Dowling, 1995; through Mozart and Beethoven to Stravinsky and Halpern, Bartlett, & Dowling, 1998). We looked at Prokofiev. We joined in the first digital recording of the tonal hierarchy, in Krumhansl’s (1990) sense, in Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloë, with Eduardo Mata conduct- aging (Halpern, Kwak, Bartlett, & Dowling, 1996). ing. (A snippet of this is apparently still available on My favorites among the aging studies involved using amazon.com on an album titled Morning Favorites: Richard Warren’s speeded and slowed melody iden- Music to Wake Up To.) tification task to look at cognitive slowing in aging At UTD I began a collaboration with Jim Bartlett (Andrews, Dowling, Bartlett, & Halpern, 1998). We studying memory for melodies. He had completed a started melodies very fast (20 notes/s) and slowed dissertation on memory for environmental sounds at them down until they were identified, and conversely Yale, and was very interested in memory for nonver- we started very slow and speeded them up, measur- bal materials, in addition to being a highly creative ing the threshhold tempo for identification in each and methodologically sophisticated researcher. We case. We found that expertise made much more of a found that the dominance of melodic contour in difference in this task than age (a finding common to recognition holds for short delays between target most of our aging studies), improving performance and test, but that the exact pitch pattern becomes for both very fast and very slow stimuli. Increased more important after filled delays (Dowling & age (up to 84 years) had an effect only on the fast Bartlett, 1981). We also found that in an immediate end, which we interpreted as indicating that aging recognition task, the key distance (in the sense of produced some decrement in rapid processing of the circle of fifths) between target and test affects stimuli, but did not produce an overall shift in the the dominance of contour, in the sense that the illu- speed at which music is processed. We since replicated sion that you are hearing the same melody again this study using a recognition memory paradigm in a near-key imitation (which preserves contour (Dowling, Bartlett, Halpern, & Andrews, 2008). but not exact intervals as contrasted with a transposition which preserves both) is broken by moving to a distant key. The result was that same-contour recent work false alarms decline steeply with key distance in a transposition-recognition task (Bartlett & Dowling, When Hervé Abdi joined our faculty in 1989, 1980). Furthermore, moving from a tonal pattern coming from the Université de Bourgogne in to an atonal pattern between target and test makes Dijon, our ties with France were strengthened, and

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this encouraged me to collaborate with French We have since replicated these results using the colleagues. (Hervé and I share a mania for collect- guitar music of Ottmar Liebert (Magner, Tillman, ing discs, essentially aiming to have at least one & Dowling, in preparation). These results with exemplar of each noteworthy piece from 1600 to music are particularly suprising in that numerous the present, Saint-Saëns excepted.) In particular I studies of memory for prose stories have obtained have enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with the opposite result: a decline over time in the ability Emmanuel Bigand at Dijon, and Barbara Tillmann to distinguish between targets and similar lures. We at Lyon. For the past 10 years or so Tillmann and tried the same paradigm with poetry, since poetry I have been working on an interesting memory shares some of the rhythmic organization of music, effect that grew out of the convergence of two of but, like prose, involves verbal content. Our results our previous lines of research—mine on the early with poetry struck us as more like the music results time course of memory, and her work with a musi- than the prose results: performance did not decline cal jigsaw puzzle in which listeners put together over time, and in some cases, improved (Tillmann & a coherent piece out of fragments by aligning Dowling, 2007). cadential patterns correctly (Tillmann, Bigand, & In 2000 I spent the fall semester in Dijon at Madurell, 1998). We presented listeners with minu- Emmanuel Bigand’s lab, and then Darlene and ets in which one of the first few phrases would be a I spent the fall semester in Dijon in 2006. I really target. The minuet continued just as written, and love living in France, especially in Dijon. We had after a shorter or longer delay (5 vs 15 s) arrived at an upstairs apartment just around the corner from a test item that was either an exact repetition of the the farmers’ market, and walked everywhere. Dijon target, a similar imitation (usually with the same has large wooded parks all around the city, and you melodic contour shifted to another pitch level), or can take a bus to one end of a park and walk back different. We found that recognition performance, through the woods. Lots of walking and really fresh especially the ability to discriminate between targets veggies, as well as cheese and sausages, etc., induce and similar lures, improved with longer delays a very healthful lifestyle. And there’s a strong sense (Dowling, Tillmann, & Ayers, 2001). Our current of friendliness and community in France—people theory is that in the early stages of memory encod- helping each other on the bus, people out walking, the system has registered separate individual ing around town in the evening, people joining in features of the musical phrases, but has not yet community festivals in which all of downtown is bound them together. In that case similar lures and roped off for pedestrians. There’s relatively little of targets can easily be confused with one another— the feeling of “us and them,” and a strong feeling of think of the first and third phrases of Beethoven’s “we’re all in this together.” Minuet in G: they share the same key and tonal One of the most enjoyable aspects in France scale, and they have the same rhythmic pattern and came from the fact that a group of my colleagues, the same melodic contour; they differ principally including Bigand and Tillmann and Sévérine in the pitch level at which that contour is bound to Samson in Lille, had applied for and received the scale. Before that binding occurs, they appear support from the ANR (Agence Nationale de la virtually identical, but after the contour is bound Recherche) for a three-year study of music and to the scale—in the first phrase starting on the memory, and they were gracious enough to include third and going up to the fifth, in the second start- me. Every six weeks, 16 or 18 of us would gather ing on the tonic and going up to the third—their for a day or two of intense discussion and planning differences are apparent (Dowling & Tillmann, in of research, most often in Paris but on occasion in preparation). What is surprising here is, first, that Marseille or Lyon. One goal is to produce a book so much processing of earlier phrases occurs while of chapters covering the topic. I am convinced that the listener is ostensibly attending to the ongoing this is a very healthy way to foster scientific inter- music, and second, that it takes so much time, on action, and far more exciting and productive than the order of tens of seconds. huge conventions.

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changes in the field publications of w. j. dowling

There have been considerable changes in the field Books and edited volumes of psychology of music, and more specifically music cognition, over the 40-some years I have been Dowling, W. J., & Harwood, D. L. (1986). Music cognition. New York: Academic Press. involved in research. First, there is a field now, with Dowling, W. J., & Carterette, E. C. (Eds.) (1987). The lots and lots of energetic and creative researchers Understanding of Melody and Rhythm. Special Issue of continually enlightening us. Fortunately, the field is Perception & Psychophysics, 41 (6). still small enough that the size of our conferences Francès, R. (1988). The perception of nusic. Translated still allows us to remain in touch with others in the from the French editions of 1958, 1972, & 1984 by W. field, and at the huge conferences like Psychonomics, Jay Dowling. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Tighe, T. J., & Dowling, W. J. (Eds.) (1993). Psychology we have sessions dedicated to music research. When and music: The understanding of melody and rhythm. I started out, I concentrated on pitch and melodic Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. patterns because that was what interested me most. Abdi, H., Edelman, B., Valentin, D., & Dowling, W. J. Fortunately, other researchers have concentrated on (2009). Experimental design and research methods for rhythm, and the field has been much enriched as a undergraduate students. New York: Oxford University result. I think as we progress it becomes clearer and Press. clearer why cognitive psychology in general needs to pay attention to our discoveries—this may be partic- Articles, chapters and book reviews ularly true for rhythm. During the past ten years new methods for studying the brain have provided Ranken, H. B. & Dowling, W. J. (1965). Language and thinking: The interaction of naming with relevance a continual stream of new insights into how music is and concreteness. Psychonomic Science, 3, 459-460. processed, and I expect this trend to continue well Dowling, W. J. (1970). Review of The social psychology of into the future. music by P. S. Farnsworth. Contemporary Psychology, 15, 546-547. Dowling, W. J. & Fujitani, D. S. (1971). Contour, interval, and pitch recognition in memory for melodies. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 49, 524-531. references Dowling, W. J. (1971a). Recognition of inversions of melodies and melodic contours. Perception & Bregman, A. S., & Campbell, J. (1971). Primary auditory Psychophysics, 9, 348-349. stream segregation and perception of order in rapid Dowling, W. J. (1971b). Review of Experimental research sequences of tones. Journal of Experimental Psychology, in the psychology of music by E. Gordon (Ed.), 89, 244-249. Contemporary Psychology, 16, 801-802. Heise, G. A., & Miller, G. A. (1951). An experimental Dowling, W. J. (1972). Recognition of melodic trans- study of auditory patterns. American Journal of formations: Inversion, retrograde, and retrograde Psychology, 64, 68-77. inversion. Perception & Psychophysics, 12, 417-421. Krumhansl, C. L. (1990). Cognitive foundations of musical Dowling, W. J. (1973a). Rhythmic groups and subjective pitch. New York: Oxford University Press. chunks in memory for melodies. Perception & Miller, G. A., & Heise, G. A. (1950). The trill threshold. Psychophysics, 14, 37-40. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 22, 637-638. Dowling, W. J. (1973b). The perception of interleaved Plomp, R., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1965). Tonal consonance melodies. Cognitive Psychology, 5, 322-337. and critical bandwidth. The trill threshold. Journal of Dowling, W. J., & Roberts, K. (1974). The historical and the Acoustical Society of America, 38, 548-560. philosophical background of cognitive approaches Tillmann, B., Bigand, E., & Madurell, F. (1998). Local to psychology. In E. C. Carterette & J. P. Friedman versus global processing of harmonic cadences in (Eds.), Handbook of perception, Vol. 1 (pp. 243-254). the solution of musical puzzles. Psychological Research/ New York: Academic Press. Psychologische Forschung, 61, 157-174. Dowling, W. J., & Hollombe, A. W. (1977). The van Noorden, L. P. A. S. (1975). Temporal coherence in the perception of melodies distorted by splitting into perception of tone sequences. Eindhoven, Netherlands: several octaves: Effects of increasing proximity and Institute for Perceptual Research.

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melodic contour. Perception & Psychophysics, 21, 60-64. development of melodic understanding and Dowling, W. J. (1978a). Scale and contour: Two production.] In H. Bruhn, R. Gerter & H. components of a theory of memory for melodies. Rösing (Eds.), Musikpsychologie: Ein Handbuch in Psychological Review, 85, 341-354. (Italian translation Schlüsselbegriffen (pp. 216-222). Munich: Urban & in L. M. Lorenzetti & A. Antonietti (Eds.), Processi Schwarzenberg. cognitivi in musica (pp.185-206). Milano: Franco Dowling, W. J. (1986a). Context effects on melody Angeli, 1986). recognition: Scale-step versus interval represent- Dowling, W. J. (1978b). Dichotic recognition of musical ations. Music Perception, 3, 281-296. canons: Effects of leading ear and time-lag between Dowling, W. J. (1986b). Review of The Musical Mind by J. ears. Perception & Psychophysics, 23, 321-325. Sloboda. Science, 231, 279. Dowling, W. J. (1979). The cognitive psychology of music. Dowling, W. J. (1986c). Review of Musical Structure and Humanities Association Review/La Revue de l’Association Cognition by P. Howell, I. Cross, & R. West (Eds.). des Humanités, 30, 58-67. British Journal of Psychology, 77, 411. Bartlett, J. C., & Dowling, W. J. (1980). The recognition Dowling, W. J., Lung, K. M.-T., & Herrbold, S. (1987). of transposed melodies: A key-distance effect in Aiming attention in pitch and time in the perception of developmental perspective. Journal of Experimental interleaved melodies. Perception & Psychophysics, 41, 642-656. Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 6, 501-515. Bartlett, J. C., & Dowling, W. J. (1988). Scale structure Dowling, W. J., & Bartlett, J. C. (1981). The importance and similarity of melodies. Music Perception, 5, 285-314. of interval information in long-term memory for Dowling, W. J. Attending to hidden melodies. (1988a). melodies. Psychomusicology, 1(1), 30-49. Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook of Science and the Dowling, W. J. (1981a). Mental structures through Future, (pp. 192-203). Chicago: Encyclopaedia which music is perceived. In Documentary report of Britannica. the Ann Arbor Symposium: Applications of psychology to Dowling, W. J. (1988b). Tonal structure and children’s the teaching and learning of music. Reston, VA: Music early learning of music. In J. Sloboda (Ed.), Generative Educators National Conference, pp. 144-149. processes in music (pp. 113-128). Oxford: Oxford Dowling, W. J. (1981b). Music, meaning and use. In D. University Press. O’Hare (Ed.), Psychology and the arts. Sussex, England: Dowling, W. J. (1989a). Simplicity and complexity in Harvester. pp 175-191. music and cognition. Contemporary Music Review, 4, Dowling, W. J. (1982a). Melodic information processing 247-253. (translated as Dowling, W. J. Simplicité et and its development. In D. Deutsch (Ed.), The complexité en musique et en cognition. In I. Deliège psychology of music. New York: Academic Press, pp. & S. MacAdam (Eds.), La Musique et les Sciences 413-429. (Japanese translation, 1987). Cognitives, 1989, pp. 232-240). Liège: Pierre Mardaga. Dowling, W. J. (1982b). Musical scales and psychophysi- Dowling, W. J. (1989b). Programming small computers cal scales: Their psychological reality. In T. Rice & to produce experiments in music cognition. R. Falck (Eds.), Cross-cultural perspectives on music (pp. Psychomusicology, 8(2), 113-120. 20-28). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Dowling, W. J. (1990). Expectancy and attention in Dowling, W. J. (1982c). Contour in context: Comment on melody perception. Psychomusicology, 9, 148-161. Edworthy. Psychomusicology, 2(2), 47-48. Drake, C., Dowling, W. J., & Palmer, C. (1991). Accent Dowling, W. J. (1983). Review of Basic musical functions structures in the reproduction of simple tunes by and musical ability. Music Perception, 1, 123-126. children and adult pianists. Music Perception, 8, 315-334. Dowling, W. J. (1984a). Musical experience and tonal Andrews, M. W., & Dowling, W. J. (1991). The develop- scales in the recognition of octave-scrambled ment of perception of interleaved melodies and control melodies. Psychomusicology, 4, 13-32. of auditory attention. Music Perception, 8, 349-368. Dowling, W. J. (1984b). Development of musical schemata Dowling, W. J. (1991a). Tonal strength and melody in children’s spontaneous singing. In W. R. Crozier & recognition after long and short delays. Perception & A. J. Chapman (Eds.), Cognitive processes in the perception Psychophysics, 50, 305-313. of art (pp.145-163). Amsterdam: North-Holland. Dowling, W. J. (1991b). Pitch structure. In P. Howell, Dowling, W. J. (1984c). Assimilation and tonal structure: R. West, and I. Cross (Eds.), Representing Musical Comment on Castellano, Bharucha, & Krumhansl. Structure (pp. 33-57). London: Academic Press. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 417-420. Dowling, W. J. (1992). Perceptual Grouping, Attention Dowling, W. J. (1984d). Review of The psychology of musical and Expectancy in Listening to Music. In J. Sundberg ability by R. Shuter-Dyson & C. Gabriel. American (Ed.), Gluing tones: Grouping in music composition, Journal of Psychology, 97, 144 -146. performance and listening (pp. 77-98). Publications of Dowling, W. J. (1985). Entwicklung von Melodie- the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, no. 72. Erkennen und Melodie Produktion. [The Dowling, W. J. (1993). Procedural and declarative

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knowledge in music cognition and education. In Goldstein (Ed.), Handbook of perception (pp. 469-498). Tighe, T. J., & Dowling, W. J. (Eds.), Psychology and Oxford: Blackwell. music: The understanding of melody and rhythm (pp. Dowling, W. J. (2001b). Music perception. In W. Kintsch 5-18). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social and Dowling, W. J. (1994a). La structuration melodique: behavioral sciences, vol. 21: Cognitive psychology and Perception et chant. In A. Zenatti (Ed.), Psychologie de cognitive science (pp. 10263-10267). London: Elsevier. la musique (pp. 145-176). Paris: Presses Universitaires Dowling, W. J., Tillmann, B., & Ayers, D. (2001). de France. Memory and the experience of hearing music. Music Dowling, W. J. (1994b). Melodic contour in hearing and Perception, 19, 249-276. remembering melodies. In R. Aiello & J. Sloboda Dowling; W. J. (2002). Review of Music, Cognition, and (Eds.), Musical perceptions. (pp. 173-190). New York: Computerized Sound: An Introduction to Psychoacoustics Oxford University Press. by P. R. Cook (Ed.). Contemporary Psychology, 47, 36-38. Dowling, W. J., Kwak, S.-Y., & Andrews, M. W. (1995) Dowling, W. J., & Tillmann, B. (2004). Les rôles de The time course of recognition of novel melodies. l’apprentissage perceptif et de l’expertise dans la Perception & Psychophysics, 57, 197-210. mémoire des sons, de la musique, et de la poésie Halpern, A. R., Bartlett, J. C., & Dowling, W. J. (1995). [The roles of perceptual learning and of expertise Aging and expertise in the perception of musical in auditory memory for music and poetry]. Revue de transpositions. Psychology & Aging, 10, 325-342. Neuropsychologie, 14(2), 169-190. Bartlett, J. C., Halpern, A. R., & Dowling, W. J. (1995). Dowling, W. J. (2005). Entwicklung der musikalischen Recognition of familiar and unfamiliar melodies in Kognition: Melodie, Klangfarbe und Harmonie. normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Memory & [Development of music cognition: Melody, timbre, and Cognition, 23, 531-546. harmony] In R. Oerter & T. H. Stoffer (Eds.), Spezielle Ziegler, L., & Dowling, W. J. (1995). The hierarchical Musikpsychologie (pp. 57-88). Göttingen: Hogrefe. nature of perceiving direction of motion in depth Dowling, W. J. (2006). Review of L. M. Zbikowski from optic flow. Vision Research, 35, 1435-1446. Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory and Halpern, A. R., Kwak, S.-Y., Bartlett, J. C., & Dowling, Analyses. Psychology of Music, 34, 285-288. W. J. (1996). The effects of aging and expertise on Tillmann, B., & Dowling, W. J. (2007). Memory decreases the representation of tonal hierarchies. Psychology & for prose, but not for poetry. Memory & Cognition, 35, Aging, 11, 235-246. 628-639. Dowling, W. J. (1998). The convergence of musicology Dowling, W. J., Bartlett, J. C., Halpern, A. R., & Andrews, and music cognition: Review of Perception and M. W. (2008). Melody recognition at fast and slow cognition of music by I. Deliège & J. Sloboda (Eds.). tempos: Effects of age, experience, and familiarty. Musicæ Scientiæ, 2, 95-98. Perception & Psychophysics, 70, 496-502. Andrews, M. W., Dowling, W. J., Bartlett, J. C., & Marmel, F., Tillmann, B., & Dowling, W. J. (2008). Tonal Halpern, A. R. (1998). Identification of speeded and expectations influence pitch perception. Perception & slowed familiar melodies by younger, middle-aged, Psychophysics, 70, 841-852. and older musicians and nonmusicians. Psychology & Dowling, W. J. (2009). Music perception. In C. Plack (Ed.), Aging, 13, 462-471. Oxford Handbook of Auditory Science: Auditory Perception Halpern, A. R., Bartlett, J. C., & Dowling, W. J. (1998). (pp. 231-248). New York: Oxford University Press. Perception of mode, rhythm, and contour in Dowling, W. J. (2009). Musical Development. In R. A. unfamiliar melodies: Effects of age and experience. Schweder (Ed.), The child: An encyclopedic companion Music Perception, 15, 353-355. (pp. 657-658). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dowling, W. J. (1999). The development of music Dowling, W. J. (in press). Melody perception. In E. B. perception and cognition. In D. Deutsch (Ed.), The Goldstein (Ed.), Encyclopedia of perception. Thousand Psychology of Music (2nd ed., pp. 603-625). Orlando, Oaks, CA: Sage. FL: Academic Press, . Dowling, W. J., & Tillmann, B. (in preparation). Memory Dowling, W. J., Barbey, A., & Adams, L. (1999). Melodic improvement while hearing music: Effects of and rhythmic contour in perception and memory. In structural continuity on feature binding. S. W. Yi (Ed.), Music, Mind, and Science (pp. 166-188). Magner, H., Tillmann, B., & Dowling, W. J. (in Seoul: Seoul National University Press. (pp. 166-188). preparation). Memory improvement for popular Dowling, W. J. (2001a). Music perception. In E. B. music with wide-awake listeners.

Manuscript received: 22/01/2008 Accepted: 25/02/2008 À

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